Einstein's Daughter: The Search for Lieserl

The author put five years of her life into writing this book, and it shows. This is a thoroughly researched book about a little-known event that happened 100 years ago. The conclusion is, of course, speculative but entirely convincing. What is even more revealing is what she tells us about the character of Einstein. For this information she draws on her extensive bibliography. She didn't make any of it up. The quotations are from letters that Einstein wrote. He was a philandering cad who cared for nobody around him. I would not have liked to be related to him in any way. In addition, the letters indicate that Mileva may have played a significant role in his work of 1902-1906. So much for the myth of Einstein, genius, humanitarian, etc.

Michele Zackheim's "Einstein's Daughter", a riveting mystery adventure set in contemporary Eastern Europe, is a gripping story of disappearance and search, an array of interesting and colorful informants, and an analysis of a famed marriage sleuthed through actual medical/psychiatric history. The reader is instantly caught in the intrigue of the investigative process as the author is buoyed by promising leads only to encounter dead ends and oblique twists. Suspense grows as one wonders how she will come to any conclusion as she sifts through tangled history and her own often conflicting exploration. But Zackheim does come to a conclusion which certainly makes sense as a golden thread of psychological veracity emerges. When she ends the book with the discovered underlinings in the "Sexual Question", she provides an emotional weight which combines Freud and Hitchcock into one muffled AHA!

Elaborate, profound and deeply felt. Here's the wit of Michele Zackheim, whose sharp eye caught details on Serbian culture, on women's feelings one hundred years ago. This book is not only about Lieserl--it's a treasury of cultural practices, women's thoughts and determination.